First I would like to say I love the site and appreciate the outreach you are providing to developers and to apsireing developers. Having some insite to Microsofts brain is very helpful and encourages me as well as it gets me excited about future technologies
from Microsoft. Secondly I would ask a question that I have also posted on theSpoke as well.
http://www.thespoke.net/MyBlog/St23aM/MyBlog.aspx

Ok Ive been looking all over and have yet to find what I am looking. Which is a
OnlineCollege class on C# and .NET. It seems that not a single college, even university of phoenix, doesnt offer classes in .net or C#. I am looking to go back to college and I want to take classes in technology
but, I want to take programming classes in a Language I already know and enjoy, C#. Does anyone know of a place I could do this? Thank you very much for replys ahead of time. -St23aM

If someone could help me with this it would be great. Otherwise I am going to start looking into
alterative education. I am planning on attending a 7day boot camp for my MCAD. However, I dont feel confident that I have reached a high enough level of understanding to just jump right into that as of yet. I would like to take some classes in
C# before attend the camp. If I cannot find college classes on C# I will probably just purchase some interactive CD-Roms or Training Videos. So if anyone has any recommendations in that area please let me know as well

I recently received a brochure from my local Community Collage; I flipped through it and noticed that they only offered VB6 and Java courses.

I had a good time at Tulane University in New Orleans, but I don’t remember learning anything there. Go to
MSDN, get involved in the
blogs , in no time at all you will meet many amazing people who enjoy learning by helping each other.

Wow, Thanks for the quick replies. I guess there is something else I should mention. Part of the reason its important that I find some classes in .NET and C# at a college is that I need to enroll some place full time so that I can apply for financial aid
that will cover part of my training boot camp for my MCAD. The company that I plan to go with offers financing via college finanical aid or student loans and offers college credit for the camp. Also in general Id like to ask why havnt more colleges adobted
.net, Is this because of how new of a technology it is ? What is Microsoft doing to evangilize to the academic community. This is important to me because well, I work for a college. Thanks for the replies keep them coming.

Well What I have to say may not be all that helpfull towards the MCAD (I keep meaning to prepare for that myself but I never have the time, which is a poor excuse I know) but take the classes even if they are offered in Java. I don't mean to start any
arguments but C# and Java are close enough that should feel comfortable reading the code in the beginning. There will be major differences but you'll have a leg up and it never hurts to be exposed to a different language. You'll learn some interesting things
through it, I can guarentee that.

My college taught in Java and it wasn't difficult at the time. I got my job and joined a VB.Net shop and was able to apply most every thing right away. I had to learn where things were in the framework much as you'll have to learn where things are in the Java
API's but the C# experience will be a big help.

Like I said it may not help you for the MCAD but it will help you out in the long run.

I took classes at IKON Education Services, now defunct. I would say don't waste your time with boot camps. They are crammed sessions that nobody could totally absorb. Plus they are outrageously expensive. Books and more books. Some good ones that I have
picked up come right from Microsoft Press.

I can remember stories of MS offering incentives to professors and student for adopting .Net. There where some of MS pushing C# as the course of choice at colleges. I thought that was also the reasoning behind the free Xbox with the MSDN subscription.

I too wanted to go down the same path and take C# courses and have the added bonus of having it count towards a degree while learning the lanuagues but I couldn't find anywhere that was a college or university that carried it.

The problem isn't with the college or university as an organization, its the professors. When I was still in college learning C++, I had a professor who showed us a program he wrote that demonstrated various sorting methods and timed them, bubble for instance.
Problem was the program was written for DOS and ran so fast (this is 2000 mind you) that the timing feature was pointless. The whole course was geared towards Unix development and they offered no other languages except Basic (not Visual) and Java, which was
a 400 level course.

Also they gave us a free compiler for us to use at home. I used VC++ but when I ran into problems, my professor told me that he couldn't help because he didn't use VC++, only the free compiler. Frustrated, I dropped out and went to a technical school.

Those profs are still there today and thought the courses have adjusted a bit (HTML, VB, JavaScript and Perl), the main course is still geared towards Unix C++ coding. Old programmers don't always want to learn new tricks and old programmers and the main ones
running the IT, IS, CSC departments at universities. Until that changes, the curriculum won't. There may have been a chance of it happening sooner if the .com bubble didn't burst (I hate that analogy!!) But now that the job demand has leveled off, they can
stick with the same old courses that they feel are easy for them to teach and let the students deal with the .Net learning curve on their own.

I would love to go back and finish but I don't want to sit through C++ classes again while everyone grasps the concept of a for loop and OOP in a language that I already know and don't plan to use (I'm a VB man by the way).

Yea, I understand the java thing because that was actually my first attempt at a language. I dont remember alot of it but, the syntax is so similar to C#. The college I am looking at right now only really teaches cobol, C++, and VB6 they also offer a course
on Java I belive. My hope is that perhaps if it comes to it I can go there and just talk my instructer into letting me write projects in C# or C++.net so that I get familar w/ the .net framework. The whole reason fo rme taking the boot camp is basically my
job may be changing and getting a MCAD would go along way towards helping me find another job. The problem is I dont have much programming job experience and I am not sure how else to go about getting some. I am a PC Technician at the moment and I do coding
on my own free time. I learn best in a classroom enviroment so im just kind of feeling held back because of the fact that I cant find any classes on .net and c#. Hopefully microsoft can evangalize to the academic community a little more and encourage colleges
to teach .net

I know of a C#/Windows Forms class at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT (USA). They do offer distance learning, but I don't think this class is offered as part of that program, as it's an advanced masters level course. From what I know of the
school, they are already using XP and Server 2003 in their labs, VB.NET for their VB classes, C++.NET for their C++ teaching, and obvously C#.NET (2003 for VS.NET) - they might even be using J# for the Java classes by now. Either way, Microsoft has made a
lot of software available to them, given what they're offering.

Blkbam, I feel your pain. The best way to learn .net in the classroom in by training centers right now and the classes are so rediculously expensive that there is no way I would pay to take what I needed plus not have a college degree to show for it. You
also hit another problem in the head, The fact that there seems to be alot of anti-microsoft pro unix/linux/open source freeware sentiment among college professors. This is one thing that linux has done very well. It got its start on university campuses and
its community reflects that. Microsoft really needs to counter act this if there going to get the rest of the world to adopt there ideas such as .net . Evangalizm needs to be a Huge priority for Microsoft just as much as Security. The idea that because of
the size of Microsoft and that the business community as a whole adobts nothing but Microsoft products only helps a little towards influencing developers espeically young inexperienced ones such as my self wanting to get there foot so to say in the door. This
stratagy does not cover all the bases and should not be totally relied uppon. Otherwise left uncheck will have a snow ball effect where the competition (this I am sure will be debated) starts off slow but, builds by taking the foundation out slowing from its
competition which is the schools that teach aspiring programmers. As well all know people tend to do what they are taught first (also debatable I know).

Sorry please forgive my short rant. Frustrations are just begining to kick in as I try and decide my future.

Btw one other thing to add. Bill Gate once said he wanted for no matter what direction someone turned for them to be able to see something microsoft. This needs to be true for the developer on a college campus. The OS and Software doesnt pull enough of a attraction
anymore for someone to say of course im going to be using a MS programming language or concept.

The following is based soley on my own personal experience and will definitely include stereotypes that may or may not offend. If you take offense I apologize it's not my intent to antagonize anyone but you know the saying "opinions are like [thumbs] everyone
has one".

In four years of university ( decent Comp Sci program, the graduate is top 25 i think) I used one Microsoft programming tool (Visual C) in one class (graphics using openGL in C). Every other class I took involved Java, C, ML, Prolog, Pascal. All running on
unix environments.

I had one class ask questions regarding keyboard shortcuts in EMacs. This was from a prof who (supposedly) learned C by reading Unix source code when he was in college.

The university crowd (who are there primarily to do research) like playing with their little obscure languages that are very good at what they are designed for. Most do not want to teach and would not if the school did not mandate it. They definitely do not
want to learn a new language unless it can help them with their research. Since VB is a psudeo-language mainly for business applications I highly doubt the universities would bother to seriously teach in it to get Comp Sci theory across. C# maybe they'll come
around to teaching it but Java and C# a very silimlair so why have to go change every thing just so they can have a new language?

As for the students at these schools, majority are anti-MS pro-Linux/Unix zealots. Every single school buddy I hung with had a linux box at home by the end of school (I flirted with it as well but I'm so lazy it was just a big pain in the neck). Why would they
ever care about learning an MS designed language when (insert language here) does it better?

I think it'll be a long time (if ever) before you see C# as the primary language that colleges teach in. It may not even be the best thing. I certainly appreciate the exposure I've had to some of the other languages and I feel that I can look at non VB/C# code
and not be immediately lost

Again thanks for listening to my 2 cents,
Risu

If you're offended by this, think of me as a lazy hack. It'll make you feel better. If you're not offended by this you can still think of me as a lazy hack and I hope it makes you feel better. I think I'm a lazy hack and I feel better already.

Hopefully mono will have some effect in reaching pro linux unix Professors and show that .net is really a concept not just a Microsoft Development Platform and that it can be used for cross platform development. I must also say that I enjoy working with
linux myself I would not say im a Zealot However I do like fooling with it. As far as development, I am more interested in Microsoft technology right now because I see more of a future in it. DotNet has played a big factor into this decision. I have been attracted
to many of the ideas and purposes behind DotNet. Such as component driven and Service Driven programming. I think DotNet has excelled in the area of bringing concepts that programmers have been talking about for years together and making it work well. Especially
w/ C# it implements alot but, yet the syntax is so clean and I like that.

I don't want to sound old school or anything, but the fact that certain Universities teach in C#, Java or C++ means little to me. To me University was about learning new concepts -- and those concepts were best taught not in any specific language, but
using math which is the basis for all computer science.

When I was in school I grumbled how much I hated in math courses, but now that I am out (and have been out for some time) I realise that it was the fundamentals that were important, not the language. The conepts should be taught in the abstract so they can
be applied appropriately in the future no matter what the flavour of the day is.

In school you should be exposed to as many languages as possible. As a matter of fact, I remember many of my most important CS courses, the language you chose to implement the algorithms was completely up to the student. To me this makes sense.